The Motorola Moto E4 Plus is an affordable, well-built phone with a big battery that will last for well over a day of use.

If you hate it when your phone runs out of battery, we have an inexpensive option for you. The unlocked Motorola Moto E4 Plus ($179.99 as tested) has a massive 5,000mAh battery that will carry you through two days of moderate use, or up to a week of standby. It's also nicely built, runs the latest version of Android, and works on every carrier in the US. It isn't the fastest phone out there, and the Moto E4 remains our Editors' Choice for being a slightly better value, but if you need a phone with the longest battery life possible, go for the Plus.

A Moto E by Any Other Name...

The Moto E4 Plus is different enough from the Motorola Moto E4 that it's confusing Motorola isn't using a different name. The base E4 is a 5-inch phone, with an 8-megapixel main camera. The E4 Plus is a 5.5-inch phone with a 13-megapixel main camera. We tested the $179.99 unlocked model, but it's also available directly from Verizon for $129.99, or from Amazon Prime (with Prime ads) starting at $139.99.

The E4 Plus is a budget phone, to be sure, but a nicely built one. It's big, at 6.1 by 3.1 by 0.4 inches (HWD), with a smooth, warm plastic body that comes in gold or gray. On the front is a 5.5-inch, 720p LCD that's bright enough, but noticeably soft compared with higher-res screens like you find on the Moto G5 Plus. It'll best please older users who want larger visual elements.

There's a capacitive home button/fingerprint sensor below the screen, but no back or window buttons: those appear on the screen itself. If you want to reclaim screen real estate, you can turn the on-screen buttons off and swipe back and forth on the fingerprint sensor for the back and window actions.

The phone charges and syncs over micro USB, and there's a standard headphone jack on the top. You're here for the battery, though. The 5,000mAh cell isn't technically replaceable, but it's probably serviceable: remove the back, and the battery's in there with a sticker on it that says, "WARNING: DO NOT REMOVE." (We didn't.)

The phone lasted 11 hours, 44 minutes on our video rundown test, which is extraordinary compared with the regular Moto E4 (5 hours, 30 minutes). It even lasted longer than our former battery champion, the LG X Power, which showed 8 hours, 48 minutes in the same test. And given that Motorola phones have very little standby battery drain, you'll easily be able to go for two days without a charge.

Performance

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 427 processor here is one of the latest for low-end phones, and it's sluggish, but it's the best you can expect at this price point. Motorola has one of the best approaches to Android: The E4 Plus runs Android 7.1.1, the latest version, with a few subtle extensions like a notification display that wakes up when you pick up the phone. Launching, and occasionally quitting, apps definitely takes a noticeable amount of time, and game frame rates tend to be quite low. If you use a lot of apps, you should step up to a Snapdragon 600-series device like the Moto G5 Plus.

The E4 Plus has 16GB of storage, of which 10GB is available, and 2GB of RAM. There's a microSD card slot for cards up to 256GB, and you can move some apps onto the SD card, although they slow down further if you do. Once more: if you're going to use a lot of apps, go with a faster phone.

Call quality is good. The earpiece is plenty loud, although voices sound just a bit muddier than they do on a high-end handset like the Samsung Galaxy S8 or LG G6. The phone supports T-Mobile's and Sprint's HD calling, as well as both VoLTE and Wi-Fi calling. The speakerphone has a bit of a crackle in it at maximum volume, but the phone's mics are excellent, with terrific background noise cancellation. Even on a busy street, my voice came through very loud and clear.

The E4 Plus joins Motorola's other G and E phones in being some of the rare unlocked phones that work on all four major US carriers. The LTE band layout and modem setup focuses more on coverage than on speed, so you'll get the best possible coverage on all four carriers, but not their top speeds.

The phone's Category 6 modem lacks the ability to combine spectrum bands for greater speeds, so you'll see slower performance here than you will on a high-end phone like the Galaxy S8. Tested against the Galaxy S8 on T-Mobile's network in the same location, I got consistently higher download speeds on the more expensive phone, and consistently much higher upload speeds (to the tune of 20 to 30Mbps vs 2 to 4Mbps).

The same pattern follows with Wi-Fi—strong coverage, but not top speeds. The phone supports dual-band 802.11 a/b/c/n, though not ac, but Wi-Fi remained functional even 100 feet from a router, through a wall. There's no NFC, though, so tap-to-pay solutions are out.

Multimedia

The E4 Plus sports a 13-megapixel main camera and 5-megapixel front camera. You don't get the "twist to camera" action that Moto offers on its higher-end phones, so you must launch the camera by dragging up from the corner of the lock screen.

Both cameras have flashes, and the main camera has an f/2.0 aperture. In good light that makes for fine photos, although there's a noticeable delay with the shutter sometimes that reminds you that you're using a low-end phone. Low-light images with flash aren't bad, although the flash takes more than a second to stage. Unfortunately in low-light, flashless pictures are poor, because of a lack of good focus—they're soft at best, and downright blurry at worst. The front camera's shots aren't as blurry in low light, but they have overly dramatic shadows.

The primary video camera takes 1080p videos at 30 frames per second outdoors, dropping to 24fps in standard indoor lighting. The front-facing camera was able to balance at 30fps in testing both indoors and out. Neither camera is stabilized, which means they appear a bit wobbly, but that's par for the course on low-end devices.

Conclusions

The Moto E4 Plus is our low-end battery champ, beating beefy competitors like the LG X Power on endurance. But the added cost of the big battery puts the E4 Plus in a slightly awkward place. At $180 unlocked (or even at $130 on a carrier), it comes very close to the $185 Amazon Prime subsidized entry-level price for the Moto G5 Plus, which has a noticeably better screen and faster processor.

Motorola is really on a roll with its low-end phones. The E and G series continue to be great values, with their fresh versions of Android, solid reputation for reliability, and four-carrier compatibility. Your choice between the E4 Plus and the G5 Plus really depends on your charging style. If you're the kind of person who takes your phone to work every day and plugs it in, the G5's faster performance and sharper screen will be the right choice. If you don't have chargers frequently accessible, the E4 Plus will keep you connected longer. The plain-old Moto E4, meanwhile, remains our entry-level Editors' Choice because it's a great value for the price.

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About the Author

PCMag.com's lead mobile analyst, Sascha Segan, has reviewed hundreds of smartphones, tablets and other gadgets in more than 13 years with PCMag. He's the head of our Fastest Mobile Networks project, hosts our One Cool Thing daily Web show, and writes opinions on tech and society.
Segan is also a multiple award-winning travel writer. Other than ... See Full Bio

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